Virtually all cable television and satellite television companies provide subscribers with an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) which provides a display of content available on each of a plurality of channels. In practice, present-day EPGs comprise a grid array of rows and columns. In some program guides, the rows corresponds to the available content sources (e.g., ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, HBO, Showtime, etc.), whereas the columns correspond to time intervals, usually in one-half hour increments. In other program guides, the columns correspond to the content sources, whereas the rows correspond to time intervals. In either arrangement, an element in a particular row and column identifies the content currently provided by the content source during a corresponding time interval.
As time passes, the EPG updates itself and will no longer display the row or column associated with the just-elapsed time interval. Thus, the “earliest” time interval within the EPG corresponds to the time interval encompassing the current time. For example when the current time is 8:10 PM, then the earliest time interval will correspond to the V2 segment starting at 8:00 PM and ending at 8:30 PM. Similarly, at 9:35 PM, the earliest time interval appearing in the EPG will correspond to the ½ hour interval between 9:30 PM and 10 PM.
The updating of the EPG to delete the row or column associated with the just-elapsed time interval will prevent the subscriber from determining from the EPG itself the length of a television program or movie which began in the past. This will become better understood from the following example. Consider a 2-hour movie whose playout began at 7:30 PM on HBO. At 9:00 PM, the EPG would indicate that this movie on HBO is still playing out during the interval between 9:00 PM and 9:30 PM. Thus, a subscriber viewing the EPG at this time would have no information regarding the starting point or the duration of the movie. A similar problem exists when the user scrolls through the EPG to a future time.
Thus, a need exists for an EPG that indicates the length of a program that spans beyond the currently displayed portion of the guide.